Various types of food product slicing machines have been devised and employed in the food industry to produce planar slices of the particular product. In general, these machines are of the type wherein a carrier is provided for the support and reciprocating or cyclic movement of a quantity of the food product relative to a slicing blade. Rotary-type blades are customarily used in these machines, although newer cutting mechanisms emply flexible band-type blades. An example of the flexible band-type blade and an apparatus which utilizes it for effecting slicing is the structure shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,007 issued on Oct. 28, 1980 to James E. Grote. This machine has a flexible blade which extends around a pair of pulleys or support wheels for support of a portion of the blade in a horizontal cutting plane. The food product which is in the form of a plurality of elongated sticks, pepperoni, for example, is carried in a turret in a vertically oriented manner for gravity feed and the turret is reciprocated across the continuously moving blade to sequentially sever thin slices of predetermined thickness from the bottom end of each of the several sticks. The slices, as they are severed, are deposited by gravity onto a moving receiver carried on a conveyor at substantially the same speed as the cutting rate.
Another example of a band-type mechanism for the cutting of food products is that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,339 issued to Richard A. Soleri on Sept. 27, 1977. The food product carrier in the apparatus of this patent is of a carrousel type wherein a series of product carriers are revolved in a circular path and sequentially pass over the cutting portion of band-type blades for severing slices of predetermined thickness. The food product carriers frictionally grip the product to be cut by means of spring biased jaws that operate to permit incremental gravity feed. An apparatus of this type requires a large number of product carriers if any reasonably acceptable operating speed is to be obtained because of the full circle path of movement. Furthermore, an apparatus of this type requires a large amount of floor space.
Still another example of a slicing apparatus is U.S. Pat. No. 3,667,522 issued to David W. Bingham on June 6, 1972. The apparatus has a cutting blade which is movably mounted on a frame to oscillate along an arcuate path of travel in a horizontal plane beneath a plurality of fixed position, vertically extending food product chutes through which the product is gravity fed. The oscillating blade cuts slices from the lower ends of the food product which is contained in vertical guide tubes or chutes projecting upwardly with respect to the horizontal cutting plane in which the cutter blade oscillates. A disadvantage of an apparatus of this type is that suitable mechanisms to support an oscillating movement of a cutting blade in a precise cutting plane is difficult to construct and to maintain in proper adjustment. The blade support mechanisms are relatively heavy and their mass imposes additional stress on the apparatus as a consequence of the substantial forces required to effect oscillating movement.
Machines of the above types require a large quantity of the food product to be supported in the product carriers. Further, in the case of the Grote patent, the turret is a relatively large, heavy device and the speed of the machine is, therefore, substantially inhibited and limited to a slow rate of reciprocating operation. Also, the machine shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,339, while being capable of high revolving speed for fast cutting operations, is not particularly suited for combining its operation with a conveyor used to transport receivers for the sliced food products as a consequence of its cutting speed resulting in problems of synchronization of its operation with a conveyor for receiving the slices.